Comments on: Dear LinkedIn, Rethink the Endorsements. You’re not Facebook or Twitter!

By: Endorsing the Endorsing on LinkedIn

Endorsing the Endorsing on LinkedIn — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:00:44 +0000

[...] It’s a “cheap gimmick to increase traction & traffic.” [...]

By: CDub

CDub — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:32:35 +0000

I am surprised that among all of this endorsement-bashing nobody is mentioning the REAL problem with them. Specifically that YOUR ENDORSEMENTS DICTATE THE ORDER YOUR SKILLS ARE DISPLAYED IN YOUR PROFILE, AND YOU CANNOT REMOVE ENDORSEMENTS OTHERS GIVE YOU!!
I don’t know about you guys, but I need my LinkedIn skills listed in a very specific way, just as I do on my actual resume. I work in architecture and technology, but some asshole endorsed me for “Microsoft Excel,” which I listed, for good reason, near the very bottom of my skill set. Now it is at the top, forcing me to remove it because LINKEDIN AUTOMATICALLY DECIDES FOR ME THAT MY ENDORSED SKILLS MUST BE DISPLAYED AT THE TOP OF MY SKILL LIST. You can edit the list in your profile, and you can also drop the skill and re-add it, but your endorsed skills will STILL fly right back to the top regardless.
This is a serious design flaw that I reported to them weeks ago and they haven’t done anything about it to my knowledge. It’s really quite inexcusable and should be an easy coding change. I just don’t get it. I would expect this sort of forced-engineering from a company like Apple but not LinkedIn.

By: Ashish Bhagwat

Ashish Bhagwat — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:37:30 +0000

Eugene,

What you said is valid for reccos, and I have no problems with the recommendations – those have been in existence for a while now. The aforesaid issues in the post are for the Endorsement feature that LinkedIn has introduced with much fanfare, and ironically with a great reception in terms of traffic for LinkedIn.

Great to have you here, Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Ashish

By: Eugene Mack (@more4us)

Eugene Mack (@more4us) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:59:04 +0000

I think your point is well taken. However, as a professional, I don’t encourage people to give me a recommendation that is flattering or inflated. I encourage recommendations that are reflective of the value I bring to the table. “With that said, any form of media by which you collect information about people can be cheapened or it can be better validated by the diversity of recommendations, types of recommendations and alignment of those recommendations with values or traits one looks for in a candidate. I think the determination of these recommendations as a recruiting tool is up to the individual who may want some indication of who the person is before they pick up the phone. I read customer reviews before I buy a product and if I notice certain patterns, I choose to either move forward with my purchase or an alternative. It’s just another tool which can sometimes get inundated with junk like…email maybe.

By: Ashish Bhagwat

Ashish Bhagwat — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:14:24 +0000

Tony, thanks for the patient reading

When you mention that they’re trying to become a media company, I’m considering this as a statement of the fact and not necessarily an appreciation of the same.

My point of view on that is fairly straightforward. Google’s core business may be Ads, but their core focus has always been to built relevance and trustworthiness of their results and matching algorithms even when using demographics & user actions. Similarly, even if LinkedIn wants to keep the business growing around Ads, the main reason people come there is not because of Ad-impressions, but the credibility of the professional demography & database as well as the strength of the professional credentials. I, as a marketer, still preferred LinkedIn Ads to Google Ads for some of Enterprise products because of the relevance of the people clicking on Ads. The moment they lose site of this simple fact and become another Techcrunch or GigaOM, the alternatives are plenty for people! Irony!

Thanks for the note again!

By: Tony Restell

Tony Restell — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:04:03 +0000

Ashish – our views on the shortcomings of LinkedIn Endorsements are very closely aligned. My focus is on helping candidates to secure a career move using social media – and I can’t see any way in which this move has benefitted either candidates or recruiters. As you say, what it has done is create a spike in engagement and activity on LinkedIn which will drive up page impressions and therefore potential ad revenues.

From all the recent moves LinkedIn are making, they are increasingly looking to become a media company in my view. Encouraging famous names to publish content on their site, making news and content sharing an increasingly important feature. I could write another whole article on why LinkedIn Endorsements is a misguided and poorly implemented initiative – but you’ve done a great job of summarising many of the key issues here. Thanks for sharing with us.

By: Quora

Quora — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:48:33 +0000

Is Linkedin becoming less valuable and credible for serious business people?…

I love LinkedIn. I have built serious professional relationships over the years and without LinkedIn, I’m not so sure if I would have been able to keep up with them or loo out for / nurture the new ones. However, I sense some serious blind rush for so…